Saurophaganax is an allosaurid theropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of the United States of America. It was named in 1995 by Daniel Chure. It was the biggest theropod to walk the Earth during the Jurassic, and it was once called "Saurophagus" (right before being renamed to Saurophaganax due to "Saurophagus" already being occupied by a now-defunct genus of tyrant flycatcher).
Physiology[]
Like its cousin, Allosaurus, Saurophaganax was a theropod with a semi-bulky body, a long tail, long arms with 3 fingers on each hand, a large head with a mouth containing lots of big teeth, and a pair of horn-like crests atop its head. Its body would have been covered in scaly skin.
Diet[]
Saurophaganax was a predator, preying on ornithopods, large sauropods, stegosaurians, small crocodylomorphs, small pterosaurs, and smaller theropods. Its teeth had knife-like serrations from back to back, and were used to slice off pieces of flesh from the bodies of large prey.
Ecology[]
So far, all we know about Saurophaganax is that in order to hunt, it would rush at a large herbivore, bite a large chunk of flesh off its body with its jaws, and let it attempt to flee, as the great amount of blood loss would soon weaken it and allow the theropod to finish it off with a fatal bite; as well as this, when dealing with prey over 4 tonnes, it would have formed small gangs, which would then hunt together to bring down their prey.
In popular culture[]
Saurophaganax was featured in the 4th episode of the 2011 documentary Planet Dinosaur. In this episode, it is attracted to a Camptosaurus carcass that was freshly-killed by an Allosaurus, and goes on to bully its smaller relative off the corpse before taking it as its own.